


A Hundred Ways to Kill a Loki

by Ranowa



Series: The Thanos Problem [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Everyone Is Alive, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Past Suicide Attempt, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Stand Alone, Suicide Attempt, Thor (Marvel) Needs a Hug, christ these boys need therapy, except they're all what-ifs that loki is trolling thor with, it's okay nobody dies and they hug it out in the end, the many many deaths of loki odinson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 11:37:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19790095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ranowa/pseuds/Ranowa
Summary: "I think," Loki murmured, after several long moments, "you still do not understand what suicide means."(Can be read as a stand-alone)





	A Hundred Ways to Kill a Loki

**Author's Note:**

> me: all right I'll be back soon with a Tony thing, thanks for reading, blah blah blah
> 
> me, literally two days later: allRIGHT here is 12K OF THOR AND LOKI AGAIN HI
> 
> Literally written and proofread all in one day, what's wrong with me. (Also it is now 4:15 AM, goodnight). May be read as a standalone, if you want; just your standard everyone lives AU, post-endgame. Thor and Loki workin out some issues. That come from your brother trying to kill himself in front of you. Those sorts of issues.
> 
> Goodnight, and hope you enjoy!
> 
> July 2019 edit: grammar and typos, don't mind me~

"Ah, Brother," Loki sighed.

There were a good many other descriptors that fit; many much, much more apt for the situation at hand. _Fool_ felt nicely on his tongue; worn, familiar. _Imbecile. Oaf. Embarrassment._

 _Drunken, ridiculous slob_ perhaps was most apt of all.

But Loki merely glared, for now, arms folded as he propped himself up in the doorway, surveying the mess. And it was just that: a mess. It was a mess as Thor's room had been as a child, but instead of gold finery and armor this was of trash and filth. A neglected, crumbling house instead of the newer, nicer one that they shared not far from here, with a rancid reek and a cold, slimy feel shivering down his spine.

"I was gone for three days," he said flatly, raising said number of fingers. "Just the three."

 _You said you'd be fine,_ went unsaid.

Thor glared at him idly, beer bottle shifted from one hand to the other. "Was 'pposed to be more."

Ah, so he was a bitter and angry drunk, this time. Good. He preferred that, to the blubbering mess he'd seen he could become. "It was to be more," Loki agreed, maneuvering his way across the room, stepping over piles of broken, dusty things, collecting trash. "Until the Valkyrie messaged me, asking if I might come back early. Messaged- texted? I don't know. I'm not yet versed in the uncultured vernacular of this planet, unlike _some people._ " He reached Thor's side and recoiled once, covering his face. "What, did you take a trip back to Sakaar? That smells _vile,_ Thor."

Thor gave an ineffectual sort of snarl, his hand stiff but too uncoordinated to resist as Loki pulled it away. "I saw you- I. I s-saw you, always- toting around one of these, on Sakaar," he said. His fist opened and shut several times, as if trying to close around a bottle that wasn't there. "No business of- don't know how you... you _judge_ me, but..."

"I'm allowed to do it because I didn't make a fool of myself while partaking. Additionally," he added after a moment, "in case you'd forgotten, I was under the thumb of a maniac. Also, you were dead. Come, Thor." He tugged once, struggling to wrest him upright. " _Come."_

But Thor did not come.

His brother was doing better, certainly. In the months since the final battle he had, in fact, done very much better. He had lost nearly all the weight, and all the- simulators? Loki still wasn't sure _what_ they were, but Brunnhilde had called them video games- had been thrown out. Brunnhilde was still regent, but only because Thor did not seem inclined to take the throne from her, rather than still being unable. He was working to help Asgard again instead of just wasting away in a dark room. He'd quit social drinking entirely.

Whatever this was, it wasn't social.

It wasn't that Loki didn't understand the concept of _bad days,_ so much. Because, he did. Probably more than Thor could ever know, and certainly more than he would ever tell him. He'd had them in his youth, hiding in the deepest depths of the library or slipping out of the city to skulk in another realm for days. He'd had them in his cell after the invasion of Midgard, long hours where he'd screamed and broke things and clawed his own hair out, wishing to crawl out of his own skin. He'd had them while posing as Odin, calling upon all the strength of Asgard's throne to stifle and hide days spent howling and rocking in his rooms, pressing out the voices in his own head.

He had them now, sometimes.

But he'd just never expected to see _Thor_ like this, too.

Thor was still resisting, glaring and scowling as Loki attempted to manhandle him about, but his brother was too big and unwieldy and clumsy, and he set him back with a huff to stand and glare. "You are insufferable, you know that?" he sneered, pointing. "Embarrassing. Look at you. Is this what the Mighty Thor has come to?"

It was meant to insult him, to aggravate him up onto his feet. But suddenly Thor's face was softening instead, mouth quivering and red-rimmed eyes going wet, and the hand that grappled for his was needy as a child's. "Y-you were- _gone-"_ he insisted, pressing his face to his arm, and Loki sighed again.

His throat felt oddly tight, and it took more than it should've for him to swallow it down.

"Yes," he muttered, squeezing an eye shut. He gave a supremely awkward, unsure pat at Thor's back. "And now, I'm not. One would think you'd be used to that, by now." He swallowed hard, pulling once at hair that was still just a little too long. "Now. _Come."_

But Thor did not come, and Loki really was not about to be seen _dragging_ the prince of Asgard through the streets, so at last he was forced to let his wrist go and stand back with a grimace. Were they still princes, now that Thor had given their birthright away? The people of Asgard called them that. Loki didn't know. Scowling to himself, he turned away, setting himself about to search for more stashes of Sakaarian drink. Perhaps the Valkyrie would like it. Perhaps Stark would enjoy the gift, before he realized a few sips was enough to lie him flat. Perhaps he should just pour it all out down into the ground outside, just to get it as far away from his brother as possible.

He really did tire of seeing him reduced to this.

"Loki," Thor said again suddenly. His voice was shaking and his eyes bleary, like he didn't believe he was really here, and it was desperate enough that it tugged and hurt in the pit of his stomach. He reached and caught his arm as he passed with a grip that was surprisingly strong, fingers digging into the crook of his elbow, prying and frightened, _scared._ "Loki, I- I-"

"You are a blubbering mess," Loki informed flatly. It was easier to judge, than it was to acknowledge the pain underneath. "Honestly, Thor."

"I- I'm _sorry."_ He wrestled ineffectually with his arm, trying to reel him in without success, his face red and his eyes watering now, and not all of it was the alcohol. He coughed and when his efforts did not yield fruit, instead wrapped both hands around his arm to hug it to his own. "I'm so sorry, Loki. I am... I am _sorry,_ please, you have to believe me, I am so sorry."

It was a return to the usual pattern. To this new, wholly unfamiliar and certainly unwelcome Drunk Thor, the one that had a looser tongue and a bowed head as if he had taken all the weight of the broken universe down onto his shoulders. To a stilted, rambling speech that he seemed to have learned as well as rote, in the past five years. The same speech Thor had tried to give him the day he'd come back, a speech that he couldn't stop giving because no matter how many times he said it, the guilt still lived in his heart the same way Jotunheim lived in Loki's.

Once upon a time not too long ago, Loki knew that he would have loved this.

Had dreamed of the day when Thor would look at him and say _I'm sorry._ Oh, he had never, ever believed it would ever come, and the idea of making him kneel and acknowledge all that had gone wrong had been but a wicked fantasy that had lived among those of freezing Asgard in a prison of ice and making Thanos bow before his throne. Just a foolish dream, nothing more.

And, now.

Now, Thor sniffling against his arm, with shaking hands and trembling breaths, tears standing stark on his cheeks as he apologized for the world over-

Loki sighed, slipping gracelessly down to his knees beside him. He gripped his arm, hard, trying to say _I'm alive._

He no longer could stand the Loki who'd wanted to watch the world burn, and even then, this had never been what he'd wanted.

"Why are you sorry?" he asked, settling himself steady on the nearby chair. These talks tended to take a while. On account on Thor being drunk, and talking in circles, and miserable, and very very drunk.

"You-" his brother coughed once, then pulled sloppily for him, trying to haul him all but into his lap. "Y-you fell."

 _This, again._ Loki rubbed a hand over his face, then just left it there, kneading against his forehead and breathing into the palm of his hand. "Yes, I did. Do you know how much I would love to never have to talk again about the day I _tried to kill myself,_ Thor? Is it an unbearably pleasant topic for you; is that it? Do you wish I had succeeded?"

It was nasty and uncalled for, which he knew; it got him a stunned gasp and flicker of hurt so deep it was as if he'd been stabbed, which he'd also seen coming. _"Never,_ Loki," he half-sobbed, "of- of course not-"

"Then, by all the gods, stop _talking about it._ Do not make me beg."

"You- no, Loki, you do not understand-" Thor's hand wavered once, closing again as if he'd still expected to find a bottle there for him to grab. Then he was fumbling forward, gripping at his shoulder with hands that smelled like ozone and were so tight they wore bruises into the skin. "That is w-where- where everything went wrong. If I had stopped it none of this would've happened. If I had stopped you- Loki, do you not see? _Do you not see?"_ he pressed, his breaths unsteady and eyes piercing in the faint light, almost unsettlingly, terrifyingly so.

It all made Loki's stomach turn.

"If- Mother would live, Loki," he moaned, eyes desperate. "We would've fought together as it always should've been, protected her from Malekith. Perhaps Father, too, if he'd been able to rest, if he'd had his family there to rely upon. We might've saved Asgard, you and I together, Asgard would still stand, our people would still live. Volstagg, Fandral, Hogun. Perhaps with us to defend them, Thanos would never have gotten the stones, he-" His face twisted madly, the hands on his shoulders digging in, "He would never have _touched_ you, Loki, brother, I'd have torn his head off the moment the thought entered his head- would _never-"_

"Will you _stop._ Thor. Thor!" He tried to wrench away from his hands, and when that did not work put his own over Thor's arms, battling the tired instinct that begged to force him away with his own power. "You speak of what you do not know. _Can not_ know, you oaf; you know this-"

But Thor shook his head again, eyes gleaming and desperate. " _No,"_ he insisted, _"no,_ I have thought on it long, and that- that is the day everything went wrong! All the ills of today lead back to the moment... if I'd just... if I h-had only- _Loki..."_

Loki closed his eye bitterly at the next sob.

No, this was most certainly not what he had ever wanted.

"If you had only what," he sighed, when it seemed Thor had ran out of breath. Or coherency, perhaps. He still looked so desperate and broken that the rant was continuing in his head. That he would've pulled Loki into a hug that crushed the life out of him, if he could coordinate it. "Need I remind you that it was not you that let go, but me?"

"I could've caught you," Thor said miserably. "Could. Should've. I _should have._ I saw you were going to let go and I did nothing. I... I am sorry, Lok-"

"You _oaf._ You have absolutely no conception of what happened that day, do you? You say you've thought on it for so long, but this is still what you say of it. You are so convinced-" And now Loki was the one upset, a bitter, clawing resentment built in his chest, and he threw one of Thor's desperate hands off even if the look on his face made him look rather as if he'd just kicked a puppy. "Would you like to see?"

Thor blinked once. Rather stupidly, Loki thought. "See what," he said, then sniffed again. His face was red, and his eyes watering.

"What would have _happened._ Had you caught me."

Thor blinked slowly again.

Loki looked at him- all red, watering eyes, face blotchy, utterly embarrassing, a still crumbling apart wreck. He groaned to himself, kneading his forehead, then pushed up to his feet. "Never mind. A foolish thought, anyway. You are still drunk. Come, Thor. We are going home." He pulled for Thor's hands again, struggling to pull him up, but Thor would not be moved.

"No," his brother said, stuck in place with seemingly embarrassingly little effort. "No, what did you mean? See- see what? And how?"

"How I am going to get a drunken imbecile home when he drags his feet and cries the entire time? It shall be quite the spectacle, I'm sure."

_"Loki."_

"I-" he huffed, tugging still, but it was as if Thor, even drunk, was a _rock._ He simply would not be moved. Loki stood back for a moment, hands on his hips, willing the heat away from his face. _How_ did Thor do this? Even still not quite in shape, Loki was no match at all for him. Thor was not moved at all, staring at him with hard eyes, finally somewhat focused at last, his face wavering between tears and an insistent need for answer- the most awake and aware he had probably been all evening.

His slip of the tongue was not going to be let go, it seemed.

Loki grimaced.

_Now who's the oaf?_

"Brother," he said, dropping carefully to his knees. He pulled the hands off his shoulders but left them gripped in his own as a compromise, dangling in between them. Hopefully anchoring Thor every bit as much as Thor still, so often, anchored him. "You are drunk. This is not a conversation I will have with you while your mind is not sound."

"But I-"

Loki held up a finger, and Thor's protest cut off before it could truly begin. "I shall compromise with you. You will come home with me, without further argument, and will sleep when we get there."

"But-"

" _Tomorrow-_ Thor, hush- tomorrow, if you still insist upon this utterly foolish venture, then I will tell you. But tonight, you will sleep. All right?"

There was a pressing silence between them, again. Thor glared miserably with watering eyes, the weary and pained lines that the past five years had worn so deeply in etched ever deeper, and for just a breath, Loki feared that the answer he needed was not going to come.

Then, Thor gave one single nod.

Relief unfolded silently in his chest, like the roots of a sapling. "Good," he said, then patted his head, absolutely the way he would a dog, and forced a smile. "Good Thor."

Thor did not smile back, and Loki could only hope that this would all be forgotten by the morrow.

* * *

Thor found his brother sitting, long legs crossed, thin back lounging, at their shared counter. Silently eating a breakfast of toast and tea, head propped against a curled, careful fist, and reading something on his Midgardian phone.

Loki looked up once, blinking in the late morning sunshine. His gaze swept wordlessly back down, and he continued swiping away at his phone.

There'd been a world of emotion in that half-second stare.

A great deal of it, not kind.

Thor swallowed.

"I..." he started, not quite sure what to say. His mouth felt dry, head still empty and fuzzy from the night before. "I'm sorry."

"Mm." Loki swiped something again; took another sip of tea. "Good morning."

A little of the tension eased in Thor's chest, and he gradually forced his way a few steps into the room. There was no sign of the mess he knew he'd caused last night, as Loki had all but dragged him back to bed, and for that, he was grateful. And Loki was eating, as well. Another thing to be grateful for. He still did not do that often enough.

"No," Loki said, as he approached. He did not look up from his phone. "I am still quite sure that I can not spell your hangover away. Nor would I, if I could. You deserve it."

"I know. I know." He sat down next to Loki, eying his plate only once before swallowing and looking away. Food would not agree with him, this morning. The nausea was his own fault, and Loki was not wrong to frown at him with that lurking judgment and silent upset. "I... I did say I was sorry."

"You ruined my trip."

"I know. It's why I'm apologizing."

Loki paused, unerringly calm gaze lifting to examine him in the silence, one of those gazes of his that revealed nothing. He was wearing a glamour today, one that smoothed his scarred face and eyepatch into two green eyes on a skin without blemish, and one that pressed his hair immaculate and his clothes into his finest. He wore glamours even more now than he had ever before, and so insistently that Thor worried he was forgetting what it was like not to hide.

The habit had grown so intense that sometimes, late into the night, he'd seen his brother flickering into the edges of one even while asleep.

His brother had always been one for careful illusions like these. But the near unbreakable clinging to them was _not_ something he'd used to do, and Thor didn't know broach the subject in a way that wouldn't provoke him into simply shutting him down.

It was a habit that had started after Thanos.

True to his word- no matter how much, sometimes, he could not stand it- Thor had not yet dared to ask Loki much about that unexplored year of his life. Loki had volunteered nothing at all, and by the way he skittish, avoidant way he acted whenever the topic was raised even tangentially, he clearly did not want to. And perhaps it was to the worst, but...

Thor could not bring himself to ask.

He could not lose Loki again.

Not even if it would only be risking driving him away, by asking him questions he was not ready to answer.

"If all you are going to do is stare at me," Loki murmured, swiping another screen on his phone as if it was a page in a book, "then perhaps make yourself useful, instead? The ambassador was displeased, that I left ahead of schedule. Perhaps-"

"Loki?"

"-if you were to... what, Thor?"

"What you said." He swallowed the knot in his throat, hands wringing in his lap. He wished for something to hold, to keep his hands busy, perhaps steady the worse knot in his stomach. "Last night."

Loki watched him still, utterly expressionless. Thor knew him well enough to not even try to read what he was thinking in his unblinking eyes- knew full well that whatever his brother was feeling, it was locked behind his glamour's face, cold and unfeeling as stone. Another habit, that he wished to talk to him about. It was hard enough to realize when something was wrong when his brother still talked in cryptic double-meanings and riddles; it was nigh impossible when he hid even his real face behind a spell, day in, day out.

"I... was hoping you'd forgotten," he said at length, returning to his tea. Purposefully, probably; just so he wouldn't have to look at Thor.

"Then you are the fool you still love to call me."

"Perhaps." He sipped again, jaw twitching. Swiped another page on his phone.

Thor had to resist the urge to toss the dammed thing out the window.

"...listen to me, Loki," he implored, dropping all surely failed pretenses at composure or calm. Loki might like to hide his, but that did not mean Thor had to do the same. "I know it's not as simple as all that I said last night. I know things might've still ended badly anyway, I know- I know I wasn't the only one who could've done something different, who made mistakes. And I know, before you look at me like that, that none of us can change the past, so there's no sense dwelling in it."

"Yet you still persist. In this... child's dream, of yours."

Thor grinned faintly, but there was no warmth behind it, or the regret that tightened in his chest. "Are you telling me you don't think of how things might've ended different?" he pressed, knowing full well that he did.

"I think," his brother murmured, after several long moments, "you still do not understand what suicide means." Two green, calm eyes flicked to meet his past the fall of his hair, and his voice held almost unerringly calm.

Thor's chest flinched, a prodding of pain as Loki twisted the knife he'd dug in now over ten years ago. It caught in his throat, tightening the lump, there, and for a breath all he could see was his brother's face, vacant, and his eyes, dull, as he'd let go. "I wish you'd not call it that," he begged, the old anguish burning in the backs of his eyes and throat.

But Loki, of course, merely shrugged, his gaze returning to his phone as if none of this was any more important towards whatever picture of a cat that Bruce had sent him last. "It is what it is. You can dress the day in kinder words if you'd wish, but you and I both know what I did." He paused for a breath, narrowing his eyes, then frowned back at Thor. "This is what I mean, you know. I can show you what would've happened, in this hopeless child's dream. But you won't like it. It will not..." He waved a hand vaguely, and for a moment, Thor almost heard something in his brother's voice that gave away to the real Loki. "It will not _fix_ this, Thor."

"And I know that! I only-" Thor groaned, sagging back against his own chair. This was going nowhere. As it so often always did, with his brother. As it had gone last night, and every other time any talk of this day had come up. At least Loki had not simply shut down and left. That was- progress. Of some kind. "How are you so sure of this, anyway? You've said yourself, you're no witch; you're no seer. You don't know what would've happened any more than me."

But Loki, _of course,_ did not respond. Just _looked_ at him with that infuriating, almost unbearable calm, that _stupid_ cleverness that Thor had always hated, then missed, then loved, because it wasn't enough that Loki be so brilliantly quick-witted and smart, no, but he always had to look at him in a way that made him feel stupid for not knowing it as well. The way Thor felt naked and exposed, his every anguish and every guilt written plain on his face for any to see, but _Loki_ could hide away under a thousand glamours and bury his vulnerability so deep that no matter how deep Thor dug, he could never find it.

All he could do was wait in silence, and hope he would not have to browbeat his brother into keeping his word.

Because this word, he _would_ keep.

Even if Loki was right, and it wouldn't help. In fact, it surely wouldn't. It surely would only make matters worse, and Thor already knew that whatever Loki was going to show him (because, oh, he _was_ going to), it would never erase how it had felt to watch his brother let go.

And he still had to see it.

Every way their family had fractured could be traced back to that wretched day. That was the moment that their paths had diverged so violently that Thor could not wrench them back together; that was the moment that Loki had been taken from him, and only returned hard and brittle, with mad eyes and blood dripping from his hands.

That was the moment both their lives had been left broken, and their family, their home, and the world, had slowly burned because of it.

No matter what Loki said, Thor refused to believe that the world would be any worse now, if he had just reached out to catch him.

"All right," Loki said suddenly.

"All right-?"

 _"All right,_ you senseless, lumbering oaf. Here." Loki pushed his plate, his cup, his phone away, clearing the space around them, then faced with Thor with a strange sort of gleam in his eye. He did not, by any stretch of the word, look happy. "If you are to be this insistent, then clearly, I can not stop you. But keep in mind that I _told_ you, you will not like what there is to see. Here- this way, Thor- no, hold still- yes, like that." With one cold hand, Loki guided one of Thor's up to his forehead, forcing it into place; with the other, he grabbed the other of Thor's, leaving them sitting there, hand to head, hand in hand.

"You're sure?" Loki asked, leveling a hard gaze, straight up into his eyes. "You are sure, this is what you want?"

Somehow, to that, Thor could not speak. Still reeling, perhaps, by how quickly and adeptly Loki had manhandled him about, tugging his hands into place and held him there, even now sitting there as if this was an utterly normal thing to do, his eyes clear and his face almost sickeningly calm. Meanwhile, Thor's mouth had gone dry, and his heart thudded so hard that it almost hurt to think. Loki's skin felt cold under his hand, a pervasive chill that felt half Frost Giant, half Thor was too nervously hot.

Rather than force himself to speak, he nodded once.

Then, the kitchen was gone.

* * *

They landed together in a starry night sky, no substance under their feet, and no breath in the world around them.

He started, just once, trying to pull back, but he wasn't falling, suffocating, or anything else he ought to have been. Magic, of course. This was an illusion. He had been in enough of his brother's to recognize it for that. Shaking his head once to clear it, Thor turned, and was not surprised at all to find Loki by his side, hovering similarly, utterly unaffected and utterly unbothered.

"What is this?" he challenged quietly. His voice seemed to echo in the space, at once both massive and not, and Thor swallowed, willing his voice even quieter than before. "Where are we?"

"My memories, of course." Loki smirked vaguely, not quite looking at him, and as he spoke, a world started to form around them. Asgard, shining at their backs, the Bifrost, solid underneath their feet. But when Thor knelt to touch it, his hand pushed straight through. "Handy, isn't it?"

Thor rolled his eyes, not bothering to respond. Loki looked at ease, again, but there was a faint thrum of tension, in there- the taut line of his back, the eerily still lines of his face. His glamour was gone, perhaps it did not work here, faint scars scratched down from his eyepatch and marked down into his pallor, but whatever he was feeling was utterly controlled behind a shadow of restraint. He waved his hand, the memory shifting, taking a more concrete form, stiffening into place, then looked at Thor again out of the corner of his eye.

His face was still unreadable. It was not at all happy.

Then, he said, "Don't say I didn't warn you," and with a rush of cold air, the memory began.

_"I could've done it, Father! For you! For all of us!"_

Light split the sky, dust swirling around them: suddenly it was happening again before his very eyes. Odin holding him holding Loki, the both of them standing back as third party observers to watch as one of Thor's very worst memories played out once again.

They were just a bit too far away for Thor to see the expression on his falling brother's face, and for that, he was more grateful than words could say.

Odin said it again. The final words, the ones that had taken the splintering crack already wedged in their family, in Loki's mind, and torn it wide open. He said, _"No, Loki,"_ and his real brother, the one watching from next to him remained so unerringly silent and still, face smooth as stone. And then-

_"Loki, no- NO-"_

Loki let go.

Except, this time, Thor caught him.

Memory-Thor, Not-Real-Thor, he lunged further, stretching out desperately to snag Loki's hand in his, then his arm, grabbing onto his wrist so that no matter how hard Loki tried, he could not let go. And something about it made Thor's heart sink in his chest, plunging downwards like an icy waterfall already, because he could see then and there that it wouldn't have worked. Memory-Thor had reached out in a way that just _wasn't possible._ He'd reached longer, farther than was humanly possible, he grabbed faster, tighter than he'd ever grabbed anything in his life.

He couldn't have caught him. Loki had been too far away.

He couldn't have caught him, because Thor had seen the look at his face at the time, and known, _he's going to let go._

If it had ever been possible, if there had ever been any way at all-

Thor wouldn't be here asking what-ifs now.

But in Loki's memory, he _had_ been caught, and now he swayed there over the void with his arm in Thor's, bloodless and gasping, his face as shocked as Memory-Thor's was relieved. _"No, Loki!"_ he shouted again, but he was beaming when before he'd been terrified, trembling and gasping with a huge, huge smile. _"I don't think so- I've got you. I've got you, brother."_

Memory-Loki kicked uselessly once, empty over the Void. Tears still gleamed in his eyes, and the ecstatic relief on his older brother's face was twisted into devastation as his.

Thor swallowed desperately, feeling as if he was trying to force knives down his throat, and had to look away.

Carefully, they were reeled up. Odin pulling him by the leg, Thor still clutching Loki's arm, going agonizingly slow to not risk not even the slightest of slips. Bit by bit, they were hauled back up out of the cold, lonely Void, brought onto the shattered Bifrost; bit by bit, inch by inch, they stumbled to safety. First Odin pulled Memory-Thor up, and the moment he was over the edge and safe he then reached out to grasp Memory-Loki's other arm with both of his.

And together, Odin and Odinson pulled the fallen prince back onto the Bifrost.

It was everything Thor had ever dreamed of, at once so wonderful and overwhelming at once that he nearly doubled over in a sob.

Memory-Thor did it for him, then. Every bit as relieved as Thor himself was, collapsed on his back, gasping, one hand shuddering over his heart while the other splayed out in desperate relief. He shivered but was smiling, breathless, his eyes like the sun in a way that felt very distinctly to be Loki's memory instead of the real thing. And there, beside him, Memory-Loki lay splayed out on his stomach, breathing just as hard, his face every bit as empty as his brother's was alive.

Odin, out of breath himself for the first time in a millennium, knelt. He turned first for his oldest.

Something shifted on Memory-Loki's face.

And then, shivering just like his brother, breathless just like his father, and shattered, only like himself, Memory-Loki pushed to his feet, and took a flying leap off the Bifrost.

Thor's stomach sank like a stone.

"You-" He wrenched desperately around, staring to his side as the memory drifted to a stop. Loki still stood entirely too calm, by him, arms folded and watching the scene unfold about him as if it was nothing more than a harmless play- like this was his foolish _Tragedy of Loki of Asgard_ stunt, not- Thor wanted to _strangle_ him. "Why would you _do_ that?!"

Loki let out a slight, airy laugh, and his smile was all bared teeth, like bits of broken glass. "I let go," he said, almost ridiculously calm. "I don't know why you'd think that if pulled back, I wouldn't just jump."

"You- _you stupid, foolish, dammed-"_

Thor's voice broke, and he twisted away, snarling under his breath. Never mind wishing to strangle him; he wanted to- to take him by the shoulders, to shake him, to snap him in half and throw him and shout at him until he stopped. Stopped this blasé ambivalence, this foolishness, this. This-

"This is not what I meant," he growled, pushing away. Sweeping a hand over the frozen scene on the Bifrost, the scene that was abruptly to much _worse_ than what it had already been; if he could've torn it shreds and thrown it all away, he would have. "You know this is not what I meant, Loki."

His brother smiled, a little, that same brittle smile that he loathed. "Oh?" He tilted his head, not quite looking at him but looking _past_ him, somehow, staring to the stars beyond. "Would you like another?"

"Another?"

"You aren't the only one who's played through this moment a thousand times, brother," Loki sneered, and was still showing him that dammed, broken smile. "You aren't the only one who's life changed today. I've imagined all of it, every different way this could've ended, trying to find the one way that is right. The only difference between us is I can show them all to you. So." He grinned wider, patting hard down on his shoulder like it was warm and affectionate, not this- broken, dreadful, hysterical thing that reminded him _far_ too much of 2012. "Do you want to see another?"

And, rather predictably, because this _was_ Loki, his brother did not wait for him to answer, before the next re-telling started.

This time, once again, Memory-Thor caught his brother as he fell. This time, once again, Odin hauled them both up onto the Bifrost, but as they both sagged, gasping, Memory-Thor did so right on top of Memory-Loki. Pinning his wrists in his grip, trapping him under his weight, shuddering and panting, triumphant in a way that made Thor shiver.

Memory-Loki stabbed him, and in the resulting spasm of shock and pain, pushed out from under him to roll straight off the bridge.

And that was how it went.

Over and over, the memory hitched and restarted, and over and over, Loki fought back and around his every last attempt to save him. Once he never even got Loki back up onto the bridge at all, his brother's magic unlocking his fingers and he watched him fall just like before. Another time, Loki used Gungnir's power and tore Thor's hand straight off to gain his freedom with it. Other times they fought on the Bifrost, Loki tearing through them with a maddened, feral violence and more than once, Thor saw himself die, as well. Bleeding or neck snapped or falling into the Void himself.

And every time, Loki fell beside him.

Once, Memory-Loki was heaved back to the Bifrost again, then and released down onto his back with his brother curled across him, holding him, stroking his hair. He was gasping, clutching him, desperate.

Shock gleamed in Memory-Loki's wet eyes, and horror on his face.

His fingers curled around a forming knife.

Thor twisted away, pressing a hand to his mouth. Not fast enough.

His younger brother slashed his own throat so deeply it nearly tore his head from his body, and there he died, collapsed in a pool of spreading blood, and face split by a smile as huge as cut through his throat.

Thor choked on a swallowed sob, and it took almost everything he had to not pull Loki into his arms- the _real_ one- just to know that he was still alive.

Or hit him- bruise him, tear him apart, scratch until he drew blood and scream right in his face for ever having held the thought in his stupid head to drag that knife through his throat and die right there on the Bifrost.

The memories got worse.

 _Worse,_ because of course, that was possible; of course, with Loki, it could always get _worse._ Next, they tried restraining him. Memory-Thor laid Mjolnir on his chest again, so solid and thick it nearly crushed him; Memory-Loki, spitting and suffocating, spun a teleportation spell on his fingers a reformed just a foot below, now beneath the bridge and falling again. The memory reformed, Mjolnir on his chest again but now Odin was there, sealing his seidr with an enchantment so powerful Thor felt it even from inside Loki's head.

Thor already knew well enough to not let himself even begin to feel hope.

Memory-Loki spat and howled again, hysterical, and with his magic sealed he was forced to use his hands only; tearing at Memory-Thor's cape, struggling so hard with Mjolnir on his chest he nearly suffocated. So Odin worked his magics again, calling restraints from the palace to bind his hands and feet, and his brother _screamed,_ red-faced and furious, tears streaming down his face-

 _"Potestā avorum,"_ he shouted, _"libertas impera, sua mors impe-"_

Odin hammered Gungnir downwards this time in a silencing spell, sealing the whispers of green light already forming at his lips. And his brother still thrashed and spit, utterly silent now but trying to scream, his eyes stricken, mad, hateful. He wheezed, breathless, his lips blue, trying to spell another curse or perhaps just scream at them, and somehow Thor wasn't surprised when Odin summoned a muzzle next, and locked it over his brother's mouth.

"Well?" Loki hummed from next to him. He turned a little, smile steady and wicked in his pale face. "Is this what you wanted, Thor?" He gestured at the horrible scene, of Thor's shattered and suicidal little brother lying chained and muzzled like a disobedient dog, just a foot away from his death, and if they'd stop pinning him down then Thor knew he'd roll off the edge anyway. "Would you like me to carry this one on? You lock me in the palace, next. You think it's safe to leave me alone, restrained; the next morning you find me. I broke my neck, throwing my head against the wall. The next way you try, you don't leave me alone, but you have to unseal my seidr eventually, before it kills me. I use it to kill me from the inside out before you can stop me."

 _"Enough,_ Loki! _Enough! ENOUGH!"_

"The third time, I strangle you with my handcuffs. The guards have to kill me to stop it." Loki smiled at him again with glittering eyes; he was _enjoying_ this, the way Loki enjoyed anything- perversely, cruelly, no enjoyment at all. "Is this what you-"

 _"No,_ Loki, you know it's not!" Thor shouted, throwing himself away from his beaming little brother. "You _know_ this is not what I'd ever want, what is this, Loki, are you trying to hurt-"

"I am merely showing you what you asked for," Loki said, and with a wave of his hand the memory started over again; his little brother dangling off the bridge again, again, vacant and soulless and dying. "I warned you before that you would not like what you would see."

Thor growled through clenched teeth. His stupid, infuriating, _twisted, maddening brother._ If he could've, if this wasn't all happening in Loki's head, he would've shaken him. Would've split the dammed memories apart with a bolt of lightning and torn them to shreds before the horrorshow could get going again. But Loki was in control, here, and all Thor could do was turn back, halfway seething and halfway crumbling, and watch everything fall apart again.

Loki had been right.

This had been a mistake.

The next memory, Memory-Loki sprawled face-first on the Bifrost, Odin still catching his breath beside him and Memory-Thor, stupid and with his guard down, on his other side. Green light swirled against the bridge, and Memory-Loki stared at their father, his face twisting and his eyes suddenly burning, a writhing hate that he had never _seen_ from his brother before.

Odin was torn apart in a violent, bleeding spurt of emerald light.

Memory-Thor fell next. The hand wielding Mjolnir cut off by a whirling dagger, and before he could even begin to recover, Memory-Loki had kicked him right off the bridge.

The Warriors Three came, soon, with Sif. Loki faced them with the worst smile he'd ever seen, and he let them rip him apart.

This time, Thor didn't even let himself watch. Not as a bitter, screaming Sif stabbed through the heart, nor as an enraged Volstagg swung his sword straight through his neck to chop off his head.

"You never did like Sif," he said, staring away as much as he could. All there was to glimpse in the corner of his eye was blood. The memory restarted again, blurring around them, and he kept turned away. "What did Volstagg ever do to you, though?"

Loki sniffed. "Sif was darling. I thought her fine, until it became apparent she thought as little of a male sorcerer as the guard thought of a female warrior."

"She did _not._ She only didn't like it when you used your gifts just to spread mischief and little else. In fact, she often expressed to me how much she would love to have a powerful sorcerer on our side, how much she would love to have _you_ on the team, if only you'd- not..."

"Not be myself," Loki said, and smiled. "Touching."

Thor groaned.

He should have known, that this was how this was to end.

The scene before them started to dissolve, again, softening for colors to melt, the world to drift apart and start to form anew. Another death, another fall, another ending. "You know this isn't what I meant," he sighed, closing his eyes. Didn't want to see it. Had seen Loki die enough times for a thousand lifetimes; had seen him die enough _for real,_ each time in his arms, each time watching him fade and die; this- he felt like he'd been pulled apart and shattered, left in a million scattered, bloody pieces while Loki was the whole one. Loki smiled, next to him, Loki was flippant and careless and pleased.

"You _know,"_ Thor choked again, "none of this is what I meant."

"...You asked what would've happened, if you'd caught me." Loki glanced at him, evasive and distant, still with that dreadful, wretched smile. "I think the correct answer to that question is exactly everything that I have showed you: I would have jumped again."

"And I would've _caught_ you again. We would've caught you together. Me, Father, Mother- no matter how badly you remember those days you surely can not delude yourself out of even that. We all loved you, Loki, _yes_ even Father, none of us wanted this, and you have too little faith in us-" He grabbed for his arm, then grabbed even tighter when Loki tried to pull away. 'We would've caught you until you stopped jumping!"

"And what? Caged me? Locked me up as a prisoner, where I so devoutly did not want to be? Chain my hands and magic until-"

"Until you saw _reason,_ Loki, you-" Thor's eyes flashed open barely of his own accord, and he turned for his brother, hands rising as if to strangle the stupidity straight out of his head. Around them, another memory played; this time, Loki as a Frost Giant, red-eyed and blue-limbed, sprinting for the city with ice on his hands. Already, the alarm was sounded, and Thor did not have the chance or, truly, the will to look away as the guard fell upon him, shouting _monster_ and _invader_ and _murderer._

Just like with the Warriors Three, Loki fell on their swords with open arms, and the warriors of Asgard slew him as their enemy without even knowing his name.

Thor couldn't cry, not in this form.

Part of him wanted to anyway.

"What is the point of this?" he rasped, voice half-broken. "You know none of this is what I meant."

"No, but it is what would've _happened."_

Thor turned away, from his brother and from the bridge and from whatever brutal death was about to happen next. "You were right," he said, and resisted the urge to plug his ears, too. "This was not what I wished to see. End the spell. I want out."

"I..."

"You have clearly thought this through, even if you are convinced I have not." He waved a bitter hand, still turned away. He didn't even want to look at his brother right now. "Well, I do not wish to see anymore of this. End the spell, Loki."

But his brother did not answer, and Thor was left still trembling by his side, hugging himself, back to him; all he could see and taste and hear was blood. What was it Bruce had said, all those years ago? That Loki's head was like a bag of cats? He still didn't quite understand the expression, but now, after spending not even an hour in here, he felt it fit, all the same. It was infuriatingly stubborn, and self-destructive, and hair-pullingly nail-bitingly mad, and Thor almost wanted to throw something, but it would only sail through Loki like it _always did,_ because Loki was infuriating and annoying too.

And speaking of infuriating-

"What is it?" he snapped, whirling back around. "I have told you; end the spell! I have no interest in seeing any more of your delusions, Loki. End it now!" Loki had not gotten all of his drink the night before; he knew that well. He still had a bottle of Sakaarian wine, and the moment the spell was ended he was seeking it out, no matter what Loki or Val had to say about it. He figured watching his brother die a hundred times was worth at least one drink.

Except, Loki still wasn't ending the spell.

His brother stood silently by his side, distant and pale in the dark void of space. As worn and shaken as Thor was, watching Loki die, over and over and _over,_ Loki himself was almost agonizingly unbothered by it all, his visage restrained and cold as ice. His eyes shrouded by his hair, his face downcast, almost like a scolded child's. He murmured something, soft enough that it was perhaps only to himself, then glanced at Thor just out of the corner of his eye. "I can show you what you want, too," he said quietly, and the bitter, smug spite was now gone. He sounded almost remorseful, if Thor hadn't known better, but- maybe he didn't. "I know, brother, you're right, this- it's not how you've imagined it. I showed you how I saw it. But, I can show you how you'd have seen it, too." He shifted his weight, arms folding as if to try and contain what he felt on the inside. "If you wanted."

Loki did actually look... reluctant. Somehow. Not quite apologetic, but- perhaps with all the blood on his hands, his _own blood,_ and perhaps he'd wanted anger out of Thor instead of this, he'd wanted Thor to just apologize and admit he was right, and when that hadn't happened-

Well, he didn't quite know. Had given up trying to really puzzle out Loki's real motives a long, long time ago.

But Loki did look genuine again, watching him with inscrutable, heavy eyes, and something told Thor it was the right thing, to nod.

He did.

The memory restarted again.

The colors and edges felt softer, this time; less soaked with bitter blood, and for once, Memory-Loki was not screaming as his brother caught his hand, and he did not fight as he was pulled up onto the Bifrost. Memory-Thor sagged across him on all fours, hand pinning hand, straddling on his chest. and there were tears in both their eyes, but the younger prince did not fight as the older threw his arms around him.

They did not have to restrain Memory-Loki this time, either, to get back to the palace. Thor was secretly relieved for that, as well, because as tired as he was of watching his brother die, it had become almost even more painful to watch him bound against his will, screaming and spitting blood against the hands that only sought to help.

But this time, there were no restraints. This time, softer, just like everything was, in this softer illusion, Memory-Thor stayed at his side, one arm so tight around his shoulders that it was not just an embrace, but a restraint in and of itself. It hardly mattered. Thor had watched his brother squirm his way out of a dozen such embraces the past hour alone.

But this time, he did not.

This time he walked, with dragged feet, a bowed head, shoulders that slumped in defeat. Resignation.

This Loki wanted to be here no more than any of the others.

He'd just quit fighting for it.

 _Well,_ Thor thought, swallowing hard, _no matter. I will fight for him._

Frigga hugged them both, the instant they returned to the palace. Memory-Thor hugged her back, fiercely and desperately; Memory-Loki didn't. Thor knew there would've been matters to be discussed, questions to be had, shouting matches that shook the palace, but Loki, evidently, did not care for them, because the memory blurred and that night it showed them in bed together, sharing it as they had when they were very, very young. Memory-Thor clutched at him the way Thor had held Loki in the days after the Battle of Earth, terrified he might vanish, and Memory-Loki let him do it, and Frigga watched over them both.

Loki, for one of the very first times, in this entire terribly bad idea of a venture, lived through the night.

And then, he kept living.

The days rippled like pages in a book, thumbed past in a blur that was discomforting and quiet. He lived, yes. Frigga was often there, speaking soft words, promising lovely things. Memory-Thor was there less, but when he was, he was uncertain and foolish. Saying all the wrong things in all the wrong ways. He shone like a brilliant star while Loki sat in his shadow, his hair light and his eye shining while Loki lingered behind, faded grey and silent, saying all the right things in all the right ways, but never meaning a single one of them.

Odin was never there.

And like that, suddenly- years passed.

Memory-Thor was the prized, idealized golden son of Asgard, again. He kept all the peace in all the Nine Realms; he returned to all the glamour and recognition in Asgard, and his name was known throughout their realms as the mightiest hero of them all. At some point, they built a statue for him, just like the statute they'd built for Loki during the years of his brother's false reign, and there was much cheering and celebration and laughter, with the Warriors Three and Sif by his side and his parents by the other.

Loki lingered behind, clapping demurely and obediently as a good, proper prince.

His face was as dead and empty as the day he'd let go.

Thor, with a sinking heart, finally realized just what Loki had meant, when he'd said to show him what he would've wanted.

The years passed again in such a manner. Thor shining, but while in their youth Loki had been the moon to his sun, now it was as if Loki a flower, one of those sorcerer flowers that grew only in the darkness and wilted in the sun. And the more brightly this Memory-Thor shone, the dimmer this Memory-Loki was.

He wilted and faded, turning as grey as a ghost, forgotten, and no one saw but them.

This time, Thor kept his mouth shut.

This wasn't real, either. This would not have happened, as much as so many of Loki's other illusions today would not have, either. He was sure of it. Frigga would not have allowed it, at the very least, and Thor liked to think he would've been aware enough to realize and stop it, either. That had been a way that he'd wronged Loki, when they were children- he hadn't _noticed,_ enough, thinking foolishly that Loki would simply say it, if ever something were wrong, but of course he wouldn't; that wasn't Loki's way. Thor had allowed so many bitter resentments to fester simply because he had not opened his eyes to see it, and Loki had shut his mouth and smiled if he'd ever asked, but...

But, that did not matter, now.

He wanted to see how this story ended.

Decades passed. One, two, three; half a century. Odin began to wilt, like Memory-Loki, but from old, old age instead of- whatever it was that was wrong with Memory-Loki. This time, when he died, it was in his sleep, surrounded by his family. Memory-Loki again, sat grey-faced in the shadows. This time they had been prepared, when Hela came, ready with magics and warriors of the greatest caliber, and they had been ready and waiting to strip her of much of her power and seal her away before she ever got her feet off the ground.

Asgard still stood. Their mother still lived.

Perhaps it was too painful to see her die again, for Loki, even in a false memory.

There was a grand, wonderful funeral. Odin passed to Valhalla, Memory-Thor was crowned; for both, Memory-Loki was there, head bowed, face clear, silver tongue silent. He bowed before the throne when his brother sat upon it, swearing his undying fealty.

There was no clever smile that Thor remembered from his first coronation, nor the steady hand at his shoulder that he remembered from his second.

There was nothing there of his brother at all, save for a cold, unfeeling statute, that no longer even really looked like him.

The night of his coronation, Memory-Loki retreated back to his rooms. There had been no ceremony, Thor noted, to recognize him as the new crown prince. Perhaps in Loki's mind, he simply wasn't the crown prince, because, in his mind, he would never have been allowed to be king at all. Or perhaps he was the crown prince after all, but there still had been no ceremony, because in his mind, to Asgard, it wouldn't have mattered.

That night, still a mere forgotten prince, Memory-Loki returned to his chambers. He shut the doors, shut out the lights.

Then he sat there upon his bed, hand held out, and summoned a waver of witchlight.

And that was exactly what it was: a waver.

Thor had seen his brother give off a storm of glowing green fireflies, before; enough to light up an entire cavern like it was alive and in the sun. It wasn't a difficult spell, even. Thor could do it himself, to a degree, had learned when he was very young, exploring the most basic of basics with his brother. Thor's own witchlight was but a small waver- like the one in the memory now, in fact, blue instead of green, a tiny candle flame that flickered and wavered with the slightest breath until it went out.

But Loki was a master sorcerer. He could light the whole of Asgard's palace with hardly an effort at all- had done so, in fact, to commemorate the day that marked the passing of Thor's first millennium. He had loved it, then, been utterly thrilled and amazed, had run through the halls with his friends, lost in a storm of fireflies, trying to find his brother hiding amongst them only to tackle him in a hug when he finally had.

Memory-Loki, meanwhile, sat cross-legged on his bed, barely with the strength to summon so much as a single flame.

"What's wrong with it?" Thor whispered, finally breaking what felt like a silence that had lasted for an eternity. He turned to his brother, the real one, not the wordless, silent one sitting on the bed, the one who cried without even the slightest sound, who passed his hand in and out of the wavering light and did nothing. "Why is it like that? Your magic?"

Loki smiled a little again, but it looked sad, somehow; as fake as the Loki they were watching in silence. "You really never listened to _anything_ Mother tried to teach you about seidr at all, did you?"

"And I can still beat you in a fair fight any day; look at that."

His brother sighed, but it was still with that smile. That sad, withdrawn smile. "All of Asgard are born with seidr inside them," he explained in a murmur. "And Jotnar too- luckily for me. Asgardian mages learn to tap into that power. We develop it, nurture it- grow it far beyond what it is born as naturally, tying ourselves to it. We make a connection, so that as we grows, it grows with us." He drew his arms around himself, hugging his middle, and though Thor still wasn't all that clear on how much of this was real or not he dropped one of his arms around his shoulders, just because he could. Loki was solidly _real,_ underneath him, not that grey-faced, silent figure withering away on the bed, _real,_ and some of the cold weight in his heart at last eased.

"That connection is a weakness, as much as it is a strength, though," Loki murmured on. Still in that same sedate, almost inaudible voice. Almost thoughtfully, really, eye on his hands, inspecting at his nails to pick at imaginary specks of dirt. "It allows our seidr to grow with us. However, that also means it crumbles with us, too. If our minds are unsound, or we are hurt, or in a certain manner of distress, then... well. You see, Thor."

"You mean-" Thor stopped, his brow furrowing. "You're saying that you are- he is... too _sad_ to do magic?"

Loki laughed shortly, shaking his head. "No. Sadness is a natural emotion, experienced naturally as a part of life; due to loss, to grieving, to misfortune. Sadness, when felt deeply, can be utilized with seidr, too, just as any other emotion. This- there is not a proper word for it. It's not a condition that is honorable for a sorcerer to admit to, you see." Frowning himself, he made to sit down, crossing his legs in what looked to be mid-air; Thor, after an unsettled moment, dared to follow him. There was still nothing underneath him, but nothing to make him fall, either. "I came across one in a few old texts; it translated roughly as spirit-death. I believe it is also a condition that afflicts Midgardians, however. Dr. Banner once described a depression to me, and the symptoms are similar."

"Depression," Thor repeated. He swallowed dryly, still watching the shadow of his brother, and the waver of his wavering light.

He knew the word, too. Still wasn't quite what it meant. But Bruce had said it to him, too, trying to ascribe it to him during the five years after the Decimation. The five years that he tried to avoid thinking about, now. Natasha had tried it once, too, the one time she had visited New Asgard.

He didn't like it.

But if the word was accurate at all, then he could suddenly understand, very very well, the memory version of his brother sitting there on his bed, gazing down to his witchlight with dull eyes and an absent smile.

The waver of light went out, and the memory ghosted onwards again.

Years passed. Memory-Thor was a good and wise king, sagely and powerful in a way that was most certainly Loki's illusion and nothing more. Memory-Loki wilted on.

Treaties with Jotunheim came. Memory-Loki was there, head bowed as an obedient prince. King Thor gave the word, and his brother shivered into his blue, frigid form, horns splitting out of his head and claws growing, his leather armors cracking from the cold, his gold fineries filming with frost, cloth soaking with cold. And he stood there with his brother to greet the Jotunheim delegation, and he bowed his head and said and did all that was expected of him, and for the first time in thousands of years there was peace, and looking at it somehow Thor knew that this was exactly what Odin would have wanted.

Him on the throne, and his brother by his side, approaching their greatest, most monstrous foe with blue skin and red eyes, winning peace by his blood.

Even as the rest of Asgard shied away with mutters of disgust.

Even as the Warriors Three murmured _we knew it,_ and Sif said to Thor's ear, _I always knew there was something wrong with him._

Even when Memory-Loki stood there in his true skin, and by the look on that alien face alone, Thor knew that he wished to be _anywhere_ else but there.

This had been Odin's plan, and he would have been beside himself with joy to see it come to fruition.

Even as it left Loki so dull and unhappy he might as well have died after all.

There was a political marriage; that, something he had not been expecting to see. Loki, to some Jotunheim- he could only assume it was a girl, and he realized then he knew so dreadfully _little_ about his brother's own race, that Loki must've known just the same as him. A political spectacle, nothing more, meant to solidify their peace treaties; neither Loki nor the girl looked happy, and Frigga was in tears when she hugged both him and Memory-Thor before the ceremony.

That night, after the wedding, Memory-Loki tried to summon a witchlight again. This time, it barely even flickered at his fingers, and when he ended the weak spell, his nose bled.

Thor, for the first time, started.

"You're-" He swiveled to face his brother, eyes widening in horror. "You're dying."

Loki gave a dispassionate shrug. "That is how the memory ends, yes."

"But I thought..." _No._ Thor shook his head violently, trying to swallow back the lurching in his stomach. "You can actually _die,_ from this? From being so unhappy?"

"That's still not really the right word, but, yes." Hesitantly, his brother glanced at him again, a shadow swept across his face like a cloud. "You... really needn't worry, Thor. This is all my own invention, you know. It is theoretically possible, for a mage to dwindle so far that they die, but not at all- honestly, Thor, it's just maudlin and dramatic. It's not expected at all." His thin smile wavered a little, just like his illusion's witchlight, and he started to raise a hand, drifting the memory to a close. "I think we've seen enough, don't you?"

This time, however, Thor was the one to stop Loki.

If he could see how Loki's nightmare ended, then he could see how his own ended, too.

There wasn't much left of the illusion. An obviously political marriage, one in ceremony only, Memory-Loki pleaded his king's favor, in allowing him to remain in Asgard when permissible, and Memory-Thor had granted it. (Which was wise of him. If he had not, Thor would've throttled his damn neck, illusion or no).

And then-

Nothing changed.

Memory-Loki wilted further.

He wilted... a lot more quickly, actually. Now that the treaties had been signed. Now that the supposed purpose of his birth had been fulfilled. He faded and faded and faded, and one day, a feast of some sort, with Memory-Thor and the Warriors Three and Frigga celebrating and toasting to some great battle, Memory-Loki took one look at the bright, hallowed halls, and just- walked away.

He went to the library, instead. That, at least, was of no cause for concern.

Until he simply did not come out.

Days, at first, then stretched into weeks. He did not eat or drink. For many hours, sometimes days, he slept, hidden in the deepest depths of the library, lurking in the dark, pressing into shadows whenever a servant drew near. No one ever came looking for him. Not Memory-Thor- not even Frigga.

One day, he went to sleep, curled safely in the darkest, most dusty of corners.

And Loki, still unbearably young, for Aesir and Jotnar. Loki, by any manner of reason or measurement, healthy. Loki unburdened by wound or curse or illness, decades spent wordless and kneeling at his king's beck and call, whose eyes were as dull and lifeless as a stomped out fire-

Time time, Loki did not wake up.

"And, that's that," his brother said.

His voice came out oddly loud and hoarse, grating against Thor, like a hand squeezing in his chest. A ringing bell, in the new darkness and stifling quiet that had fallen.

This time, he did not wait for Thor to ask, and he did not announce it so Thor could stop it.

This time, the world began to darken around him, feeling flooding back in like a wave, and by the time he realized what was happening, it was too late to stop it.

Their kitchen slammed back in around him, Asgard gone in barely a drift of air, and just like that, it was over.

His stomach lurched, and his head spun straight with it.

Somewhere through the haze, Thor still shaking his head, tying to come back to himself, he recognized his brother moving around him. Finishing the rest of his tea, long since gone cold. Clearing away his plates, neatly situating them down in the sink. Phone swiped from the table and he slipped away, so lithe and graceful it was baffling and definitely infuriating, utterly at ease while Thor was so far away from it.

He dropped down to the nearby couch, kicking his feet up, and began texting in silence.

It took him, still hungover, now, utterly dazed out of his mind, what felt like many, many minutes to clear his head enough to haul himself out of a broke stupor, and cobble the aching, splintered, hurt pieces of himself back together.

No matter how many times he saw his brother die, it really never got easier.

He vehemently hoped that it never did.

That the deep, violent ache in the pit of his stomach, the hollow emptiness- the way that it felt hard to catch his breath, even now, because every time he closed his eyes, he saw Loki, letting go...

He hoped that the pain of it never went away.

That, at least, he could grab with his own two hands, thrust before his stubborn brother's face, and shout _look at me, Loki, you tell me that this is not proof that I love you._

Thor sagged, dropping his face into his hands, and forced himself to breathe out. Long, shaking, and hard.

_Come on, Thor._

_Pull yourself together._

In what felt like a curious reversal to the night before, and one he was certainly more comfortable in, Thor tentatively made for the couch himself. Loki still looked utterly at ease- and was also completely ignoring him- but he didn't protest his approach, and Thor figured that was as good as he was going to get.

He sat down beside him, and tried his best not to fidget.

"It wouldn't have happened that way, you know," he said finally.

"Hm?" Loki glanced at him over his phone, as if he'd forgotten he was there at all. The little _liar._ "Ah. Yes, I know. As I said, it was mostly dramatics. A second _Loki of Asgard_ play, perhaps. I don't know; I think I liked the first better."

Thor sighed. He knew what Loki was doing; trying to deflect, like this, trying to slither underneath it and ignore it all, and, maybe he was still hungover, and tired, and worn, and weary, but he was not going to allow it. "No," he said, leaning closer; trying to force their eyes to meet over that stupid phone. "I mean that Mother would never have allowed it, for one. I don't think I would have, either." He frowned for a moment, something catching. "For that matter, _you_ would not have, either. If we'd tried to do that to you you would've left and we'd never have seen you again. You'd have left the day they built that statue me and you know it."

This, finally, worked a smile out of him, even if it was slight and crooked, barely a half-twitch, and light flickered in his eye again. "Yes, it was rather garish, wasn't it?" He smirked, lowering his phone to rest on his stomach. "I thought mine was better."

"You would." Relieved, now, sensing that Loki would no longer tense or fight if approached, Thor allowed himself to slide a little closer, putting an arm around him the same way he had in the illusion.

This time, he needed it just as much as he thought his brother did.

"There was nothing you could've done, Thor," Loki muttered, finally. The words came out dispassionate and detached, his eye slid shut, still almost too deceptively lax and loose under his arm. "I spent a long time trying to find a way out of that day. Same as you, I imagine. I spent a very, very long time reliving it, trying to find what was missed, what should've been done, what _I_ ought to have done. For every possibility I showed you, I thought through ten more that I did not. There was _nothing,_ Thor _._ "

And what was there, for Thor to say to that? He wanted to protest, of course. There was no part of him that could sit there and listen to his brother tell him _you had to let me fall_ in silence, but after what he'd seen...

He closed his own eyes, swallowing hard at the lump in his throat, and willed his pounding heart to settle.

"Not for the reasons you might think," his brother said suddenly, just as Thor had started to move, dragging a nearby blanket over them. Loki, undisturbed by the motion, talked on, his eye still shut and his face still calm. "That day was the end result of a century's worth of wrongs, all crumbling together in their perfect storm for so many years... All the reasons that I decided to let go- my heritage was but one, Thor. There was... ah, the Midgardians have a saying, brother. _Something is rotten in the state of Denmark._ Well, something had been rotten in the state of Asgard for a century. Maybe there was something that could've been done, but by the time Odin told me the truth of my heritage, it was too late."

The way he said it was sad, somehow. Not even resigned, truly. Just as if it was a simple, undeniable fact of life.

A fact of life, that their family had been cursed since its inception for that day on the Bifrost to happen, and there was nothing either of them could've done to stop it.

Thor leaned left, closing his eyes tight and letting his hand rise to twist into Loki's hair, and swallowed back the despair that had been spent five years building.

The thing was, Loki was right.

He'd known for a long time that it had never been just as simple as catching him. And he'd known for even longer than that that, even if it had been-

Thor hadn't pushed him.

Loki had let go.

That had been Loki's choice, and not his fault.

But it was simply so much easier to pretend otherwise.

To believe that it _was_ that simple as reaching out and grabbing his brother's hand- that he'd had that kind of power, that he been strong enough to protect Loki from it all. His own choice to fall, and then all that had happened after it. That no matter all that had gone wrong in the centuries before it, so much of it choices their parents had made _for_ them, not even allowing Loki the choice in the matter- that Thor could've been stronger than it all, held his arms out and forced it to stop and taken every last blow, broken trust, betrayal, hurt- just take it all in his place, and then, _then,_ he just might've been able to catch him. Loki was his little brother, and his responsibility to protect, his responsibility to keep safe, Norns, he _loved_ him- he could not accept being told that there was _nothing_ he could've done to stop him from dying, over and over again. Nothing he could've done to stop what Thanos had done, nothing he could've done to keep his brother as the god of mischief he remembered, not the paler, quieter, colder creature that lived in his place now, the one that could barely sleep at night and still choked if ever the wrong reminder or question or touch came during the day.

No, he thought, running his fingers through Loki's hair, it was much, _much_ harder to accept that there was nothing that could've been done, than to pretend.

"Thank you for showing me," he sighed at last.

Loki scoffed beside him, shifting his head just enough so he could see him roll his eye. "It wasn't what you wanted to see."

"No. No, you're right, it wasn't, but..." He grimaced, rubbing his eyes. "I think I need to see it, all the same." And, Thor hadn't slept well at all last night, hadn't slept well at all the past three days, and it certainly wasn't healthy but he was scared every time Loki left his sight, and only now that he was back could he relax enough to sleep again. He let his head sag left, resting carefully against Loki's, and after the number of times he'd seen his dammed _brother die_ today abruptly knew he wasn't going to be letting him out of his sight.

Not any time soon.

Beside him, he heard the very faint tapping noises that confirmed Loki was on his phone, again. He had seemingly accepted being used as a pillow for the foreseeable future, and Thor grinned, just a little. After the number of sleepless nights Loki had put him through, as far as he was concerned, his brother damn well deserved this.

After a few minutes of careful, relaxed silence, something niggled at the back of Thor's mind, and he cracked an eye back open. "Loki?"

"You're meant to be sleeping," his brother said, not missing a beat. "Shh."

Thor blinked several times, waiting for his hazed vision to clear. Just enough for him to see, yes, actually, Bruce had texted Loki a picture of yet another cat, under the contacts name PROFESSOR SMASH, and Loki was busy giving their friend an explanation on the breed, potential domestication, and mischief-making-abilities.

(Thor suspected Tony had programmed Bruce's name into the contacts himself, and Loki had not yet figured out how to change it.)

"In a moment," Thor sighed, smiling. He shifted, a little, trying to manipulate Loki's shoulder into a better pillow without being excruciatingly obvious about it. "If- Loki, if you should ever like to... talk, about it. Your heritage, or Father, or- anything, really. Then..."

Loki snickered slightly, an elbow digging into his side. "You have no idea how _much_ you would not like that, Thor. Or the enormity of the mess of which you inquire." He scrolled around for a few moments, still smirking, then just reached up to pat his cheek. "Perhaps when you wake up. And are not half-drooling onto my face."

Then, he went back to his phone with Bruce in what was clearly meant to be a _good night._

It wasn't much.

But, Thor considered, leaning closer and slipping further under the shared blanket, feeling the rise and fall of his brother's breaths against him-

Well, perhaps it was a start. 

**Author's Note:**

> Translation of the curse Memory-Loki tried to use: Latin, for "By the power of the ancestors, I command freedom, I (command) my death-"
> 
> (AKA, I know Latin; I don't know Dutch. Norwegian? I... it is four AM... whatever language Norse gods would speak.) 
> 
> Anyway, n-now, I'll be off to. Write a fluffy Tony recovery party. And hopefully not write 12k words of this in one day again. 
> 
> Feedback is always appreciated! Thanks for reading!!!


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